AS comebacks go, they’re up there with Lazarus. Five years ago Take That were five washed-up ex-boybanders. Now, they’re back on the top of a wave.

Last week the boys rocked the north east as they kicked off their 27-date Progress tour and tonight they hit the north west with eight nights at the City Of Manchester Stadium.

There is no other band in the country, if not the world, that could fill a 60,000-capacity venue for more than a week as part of a tour.

Take into account that all 1.34 million tickets sold out within a day – the boys had to add 11 shows as soon as phone lines opened to keep up with demand – and the achievement seems even more impressive.

Gary, Mark, Howard, Jason and Robbie could probably have added 11 more nights and still not satisfied all the people who want to see them.

But there is one disappointment for Mark Owen.

“I wanted it to be at Anfield,” he shrugs. “Gary and I have always been massive Liverpool fans, and we thought, if we’re playing football grounds it should be there. Not instead of Manchester, but as well.

“The tour manager said it wasn’t big enough. Something to do with the logistics. I was dead disappointed.

“If you’re coming from Liverpool, scream really loud and then next time, if we get a next time, they’ll let us do it at Anfield.”

The sheer scale of what the Fab Five are undertaking is not lost on the band.

Most of this week the lads have been on a brief break but there is still lots of work to do, items to approve, posters to sign and other assorted tour-related duties to carry out.

And Gary has got that small matter of being the new head judge on X Factor to contend with. Auditions kicked off in Birmingham on Wednesday.

He says: “I’ve spent the last five years making albums, doing tours, it’s been all about the band and me and I fancied just taking a back-seat for a while and helping other people develop their careers.”

On some dates Gary will judge auditions by day before hitting the stage with the other Take That boys at night.

Sounds like a lot of hard work.

“The idea of actually going on tour is really exciting. But there’s always so much to do, so there is a worry. I’m not really excited until we’re done and ready.”

Before Progress, Take That’s last tour Circus was one of the biggest tours by a band the UK had ever seen.

The shows saw the band, then a four-piece, performing with scores of dancers and acrobats, as well as engaging in the carnival atmosphere themselves by putting on clown make-up and riding unicycles.

Then there was the not-so-small matter of a mechanical elephant.

Without giving too much away the Progress tour has got plenty of tricks up its sleeve too.

“How are we going to top the last one? That was the first question we had to ask when planning the Progress tour,” says Mark.

“The first and most important thing we did was to get the songs sorted and build the show around that. When you look at the songs we play, even if we got up there and did nothing but stand and sing, there are some great songs.

“We have a lot of confidence in the set list we’ve built over 20 years. But us being us, we couldn’t just go up and do that, we had to think, ‘We could sing the song, but we could also do it while flying out of a plane. Come on!’

“There are certain members of the band who push the theatrics a little more than others,” he continues, a mischievous expression suggesting he’s one of those keen to make things as spectacular as possible.

“After we’d decided on a set list, we had to find a happy medium with the production side so everyone was comfortable, and then, once we’d run through it a few times, we could have fun with it.”

As we know, Robbie Williams rejoined the band ahead of writing and recording Progress, which has sold more than two million copies in the UK since its release in November.

The Take That of 2011 is a very different band to the one he left in 1995, and his absence from their 2005 reunion and subsequent two albums, Beautiful World and Circus, was almost as big a story as the reunion itself.

“Rob’s had to come in and do things he hasn’t done for 10 years or so, and be part of a group,” says Mark.

“It’s a whole new thing for him, but seeing how well he’s adjusted to it is great. There was a feeling like, ‘What if he doesn’t want to put clown make-up on while he’s singing’ or ‘How’s it going to work with all of us?’ but he’s definitely part of the band in the truest sense.

“In fact, we have to hold him back now – he wants to put make-up on during every song...

“Now and again I catch myself looking over my shoulder thinking, ‘Oh, we’re back, all of us’ and I’d laugh inside. I can’t believe it. I keep getting this warm feeling.”

“Rob’s return has been so well accepted by the fans,” says Gary. “Even when we came back in 2005, the goal was to get us all back together eventually, but the fact that’s actually worked out that way is incredible.

“I think it’s lovely because it gives everyone a platform now to do whatever they want. I think for us, as well, it’s about getting people used to the fact that this band will always change. The band might be one of those things we can all do and toy with and come back to whenever we want. We want to keep things interesting. Too many bands go stale and people leave because of that.

“I want to make sure this is an environment where people can come and go as they want. When anyone feels like they want to create something good, we can all get in a room and do it.”